Hans christian andersen gay

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Andersen’s physician Emil Hornemann described Andersen’s sexuality as “ascetic” (J. Andersen ). Such a conclusion underscores Andersen’s chaste conversations with prostitutes and his series of emotionally intense but nevertheless platonic relationships with both men and women. Let's take a look at Andersen's fairy tale and the symbolism embedded in the story, and see how it could very well reflect a gay author feeling out of place in a heterosexual world.

Hans Christian Andersen, the famous Danish writer and a well known gay artist, never found a partner to share his life with in Denmark. Andersen's biographer, Elias Bredsdorff, in used diaries to argue that Andersen never had sexual intercourse but was a compulsive masturbator; Bredsdorff is uneasy with the notion of "homosexual emotions" and therefore declines to label his subject gay.

In , when Hans Christian Andersen began composing “The Little Mermaid,” one of his soon-to-be-best-known fairytales, he found himself in a deep funk. The most thorough descriptions of Andersen the man and analyses of his work that have their origin in the theory of homosexuality is Heinrich Detering 's chapter on Andersen in his book Das offene Geheimnis.

The book has one of Andersen's paper cuts on the front of the cover! This book in gained the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen prize of Odense City of 50, euro. Wullschlager, who speaks of Edvard Collin of all people! Andersen's diaries leave no doubt that he was attracted to both sexes; that at times he longed for a physical relationship with a woman and that at other times he was involved in physical liaisons with men [JdM's italics].

Nevertheless, the matter has been discussed several times in Denmark, for example in Elias Bredsdorff's biography of Hans Christian Andersen and in Johan de Mylius 's H. Andersen, Life and Work , new edition with the title H. Andersens liv.

Dag for dag H. Andersen's Life. Day by Day. The latter has furnished documentation for things that speak for very warm feelings indeed from Andersen for Henrik Stampe and Harald Scharff on a poem by the latter, see also the introduction to Johan de Mylius's edition of Andersen's Samlede digte Collected poems It must be stressed that there is no evidence to support the idea that Andersen should ever have had what Wullschlager calls "physical liaisons" with men.

It is likewise doubtful whether he ever had physical contact with a woman - in spite of several visits to brothels. It might be said that Andersen's feelings did not have any gender. His sexuality indeed did as appears from many passages in almanacs and diaries, for example in the diary from 11 July "Sensual, a passion of the blood, which was almost animal, a wild urge for a woman to kiss and embrace just as when I was in the Mediterranean", an exclamation, which no homosexual would make.

To conclude , it is correct to point to the very ambivalent and also very traumatic elements in Andersen's emotional life concerning the sexual sphere, but it is decidedly just as wrong to describe him as homosexual and maintain that he had physical relationships with men. He did not. Indeed that would have been entirely contrary to his moral and religious ideas, aspects that are quite outside the field of vision of Wullschlager and her like.

Life H. Andersen centre Work. Titles Translated. Web services.